On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive-not to mention inconsistent with The Onion's commitment to parody and satire, however biting....No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.

In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.

Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

the801:skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

/have no idea who she is; didn't pay attention to the oscars at all.

I can kind of understand the joke they were trying to make. It's right up there with "Mr. Roger's dreams of burying hookers in the desert."

But, they fell flat on their faces this time. And, that's what happens when you just try too hard.

Vodka Zombie:the801: skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

/have no idea who she is; didn't pay attention to the oscars at all.

I can kind of understand the joke they were trying to make. It's right up there with "Mr. Roger's dreams of burying hookers in the desert."

But, they fell flat on their faces this time. And, that's what happens when you just try too hard.

The spirit of the joke was funny and typical Onion. The choice of that particular word for a nine year old was wrong.

catmandu:Vodka Zombie: the801: skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

/have no idea who she is; didn't pay attention to the oscars at all.

I can kind of understand the joke they were trying to make. It's right up there with "Mr. Roger's dreams of burying hookers in the desert."

But, they fell flat on their faces this time. And, that's what happens when you just try too hard.

The spirit of the joke was funny and typical Onion. The choice of that particular word for a nine year old was wrong.

SpikeStrip:catmandu: Vodka Zombie: the801: skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

The spirit of the joke was funny and typical Onion. The choice of that particular word for a nine year old was wrong.

To all the people who are all butthurt over The Onion calling Quvenzhané Wallis a horrible name: You embody The Onion's slogan, "Tu Stultus Es." Or, in English, "You Are Dumb."

Please don't misunderstand...I'm not defending them. What they did was in poor taste, no doubt about it. It crossed the line, for sure. But lest we forget - at its best, satire is supposed to do one thing. And that is: hold a mirror up to society, and show it where its warts are. And in calling the least-offensive person on the red carpet (a charming, poised, adorable, talented, and universally-praised 9-year-old) the MOST offensive word that exists, what The Onion was TRYING to do was to make us think.

How often do we dismiss some celebrities as being "bad people" without even knowing them? I know some people who claim to not be able to stand Anne Hathaway, or Taylor Swift, or who will not see anything Gwyneth Paltrow does, because they say they "hate" them. Many actresses in particular seem to suffer this kind of stigma. We just judge them so easily. Certain public figures just rub us the wrong way, and that's fine...If irrational, and often misguided.

Pointing that out was all The Onion was trying to do. To ask us to consider why we harbor weird prejudices against certain people we don't even know. By calling a beloved young talent by a nasty slur, the goal was the same as if they'd said, "Is it just us, or is Tom Hanks a piece of shiat?"

So, yes...What they did was ill-advised, and designed for maximum shock value. As such, feel free to lambaste them if you must. But for fark's sake...At least do it for the right reasons. Not because you were too thick to comprehend the impetus of their intent.

Meh, it's just parodying the essence of the nasty film industry. But I'm sure we'll get the President talking about how 'if he had a third daughter she'd look like....' Americans are still racist...., etc. etc. ad infinitum. reductio ad absurdum.

But to be serious for a second, the whole monologue was about her "I beat Meryl" comment at the Golden Globes. She took shots at all her Oscar challengers, but punctuated each with a nice compliment.

Extreme contrast and misdirection are common tools in a humorist's shed. Whoever posted that used a risky medium in which to employ extreme contrast. Twitter gives you no room to provide a context, or followup/correction (for when a joke goes wrong).

Personally, calling a kid a coot is so over the top as to be funny to me. Saying that George Clooney farks girls a few years older than her is just stating a fact, and is more creepy than funny. But that's just me.

the801:skimmed like 4 articles about this and saw nothing even hinting of an explanation as to what caused someone to think she's a coont. i have to imagine that she said or did something or was in some way coontish for anyone to have mentioned it.

/have no idea who she is; didn't pay attention to the oscars at all.

Is this post satire too?

I mean, if not, this analysis thoroughly and completely misses the point of the "joke".

No, she didn't do anything "coontish". She did absolutely nothing that wasn't adorable and 9-year-old-child-like ... which is the very punchline of the joke.

When it works, it's because what was being said was so outrageous that the audience is in on the joke. The humor is that both parties realize that what was said was ridiculous.

Unfortunately, at 140 characters of text, and given the usual expectations for Twitter, the joke doesn't come across as anything more than a mean insult. Which means that it fell flat and instead of having a nice little meta-joke about offensive jokes, we just have something that looks like an offensive joke.

Ultimately, I think that it's a case of no real harm done. The Onion took a swing, recognized they had a miss, scrubbed the joke and issued and actually contrite apology.

At this point, the only people who are shouting are a) people who go out of their way to be offended and b) people who think that self-censorship is a traitorous violation of the 1st Amendment. Which is to say, in both cases, a whole bunch of stupid c%nts.